The Scent of Sake (56 page)

The women looked around for zabuton.

“I thought it was finished,” Fumi whispered.

“Where are the tatami?” Tama asked. “Just bare wood. And I don’t see any zabuton.”

“What are those things with the long legs?” Rie asked, looking at square wooden pieces with backs and padded cushions.

The women were still standing, looking around in puzzled be-wilderment when Naoko entered exquisitely attired in a pale blue kimono, smiling and bowing.

“Oh, I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Grandmother,” she bowed. She hurried to Rie’s side. “Please be seated,” she said, holding Rie’s arm. “This is a Western-style chair, Grandmother. Can you sit in it?” She helped Rie into the chair, where Rie sat uncomfortably, her feet dangling above the floor.

“And Mother, Aunt Tama, please take a seat. I am so honored that you were able to visit today,” she said in her politely soaring voice.

The maidservant entered and placed tea and cakes on small, high wooden tables next to the chairs. Rie noted that the cakes were from the Kadatoya in Kyoto.

“How is the baby today?” Fumi asked.

“She is fine and healthy, thanks to you,” Naoko said. “I’ll bring her here after I have played. She is napping just now. Please help yourselves.” She indicated the cakes on the tables.

The long koto sat on a mat on the wooden floor, a zabuton facing it.

Naoko seated herself gracefully and leaned forward. She placed bone picks on her fingers and paused, her hands resting lightly on the thirteen strings.

The visitors fixed their eyes on Naoko, a vision of elegant aristocratic beauty as her fingers began to dance over the strings. The liquid tones of the koto filled the room with a mellifluous familiar

The Scent
of
Sake

359

melody. Naoko’s fingers raced faster and faster until the three older women were mesmerized.

Well, Rie mused as she listened, her family never had the leisure for these refinements. They had only heard the koto or samisen when they went to a concert, so infrequently. If they had a chance to squeeze in anything but brewery work they tried to teach the kurabito to read and write a bit.
I guess the Omura House is going to become something very different now.
She sighed, feeling yet again that life was changing, and with it would come an end of an era.

Naoko played another selection before turning to Rie. “I don’t want to tire you, Grandmother,” she said.

“Oh, I am enjoying your music, Naoko. We have never had the opportunity to hear the koto in the house before. Thank you.” Rie nodded. “And Naoko, please tell us what that large black box with the black-and-white teeth is.” Rie pointed to a piece of furniture standing against the far wall.

“Oh, that is called a piano, Grandmother. Come, I’ll show it to you.”

The women approached the piano cautiously. Naoko played a scale and a few chords. “When Hana is old enough she will have lessons on the piano,” Naoko said in her lilting voice. She rose from the stool. “I’ll bring Hana now. Excuse me,” she said, and disappeared through a doorway.

Naoko returned carrying the infant wrapped in a white lace-trimmed garment, a white bonnet on her head. The three older women surrounded Naoko, exclaiming and reaching for the baby’s waving fists.

“Ah,”
Rie said, her gaze on the lovely baby girl. “My first great-grandchild. I am so pleased that you have named her Hana.”

“Yes, my husband thought you would be. He was particular about choosing her name.” Naoko bowed.

360
oyce Lebra

When the visit was over the women walked back toward the old main house. Before they reached the entrance, Hirokichi walked rapidly toward them. “Grandmother, Mother, have you heard?”

“
Eh . . .
what is it, Hiro?” Rie asked.

Hirokichi took Rie’s arm. “We reported Buntaro’s discovery of Yamaguchi’s treachery at the last Brewers Association meeting, you know.”

“Oh?”

“They say Yamaguchi committed suicide yesterday.”

Rie stopped and looked at her grandson, her heart fluttering suddenly, and yet she was surprised at how little satisfaction the news gave her. “
Ah . . .
so that is how he ended?” She paused. “Then I must tell my father. He would want to know.” She bowed slightly to Hirokichi and continued into the parlor, where she knelt in front of the Butsudan, Tama and Fumi behind her. Rie bowed and was silent for a few moments. Then she turned and asked Tama to bring tea.

The three women sipped slowly.

Tama leaned forward. “I could never get used to that kind of furniture and that hard floor. Don’t they have tatami? I didn’t know if I should ask.”

“I wonder,” Rie said. “Well, Fumi did you ever think the day would come when you had to wait for a special invitation to visit your son’s house?”

Fumi shook her head and smiled with a hint of pride. “It’s a new age, Mother. Who knows what new things Hiro will introduce?”

“I am thankful he is house head now and that my time will soon end. He has raised White Tiger to number one,” Rie said. “That is enough.”

“We were already well on the way, Mother, weren’t we?” Tama said firmly.

The Scent
of
Sake

361

Rie laughed softly, her fan over her face. “Yes, Tama, well on the way.”

That night as Rie sat in her room alone the thought came to her that she herself wished to select the characters for her tomb-stone. She took out inkstone, brush, and rice paper from her black lacquer writing box inlaid with mother of pearl. She poured a few drops of water onto the inkstone from a miniature iron pot, and rubbed the inkstick back and forth until the ink was of proper consistency. She dipped the tip of the brush into the ink, held the brush over the rice paper, and paused. She wrote “spring blossom” a few times. Then she dipped the brush again and wrote “autumn reverie” twice. Next she wrote “tranquil water.” She sighed and dipped the brush again, the pain that Toichi’s death had caused her all those years ago receding with the last word written. She wrote the characters for “first sake,” then smiled and set the brush down on the inkstone.

She went back to her dressing table and picked up her comb. “First sake,” she said to herself and smiled until her eyes were nearly slits.

Rie heard Fumi’s voice in the corridor one morning. “Fumi? Come in, dear.”

Fumi opened the shoji to her mother’s room. She sat and faced Rie.

“How nice to see you.” Rie smiled. “Have a cup of tea, dear.” Fumi inclined her head, as though noticing for the first time how her mother had aged and become mellowed, without the hard edge she’d once had. “Mother, Eitaro and Sei want to have a

family gathering to celebrate your eighty-eighth birthday.”

“Oh, dear, let’s not talk about my birthday.” Rie shook her head, her lips pressed firmly together.

“But Mother, your eighty-eighth is so important. You know

362
oyce Lebra

you always told us how important it is because the numbers resemble the character for rice. We must celebrate.”

Rie broke into a wrinkled smile. “Oh yes, that is true, dear. All right.”

“Wonderful! It will be doubly special because Hiro has a surprise for the occasion.”

“
Ah,
Hiro often has surprises for us, doesn’t he? I wonder what it is this time.”

“You will see, Mother.” Fumi sipped tea with Rie for a few minutes, then excused herself, saying the celebration would be in time for her birthday, two weeks hence.

The entire family assembled for Rie’s important birthday. All the children and grandchildren: Sei and Mari and their children, Fumi and Eitaro with Mie and her husband, even Ume and her family and Kazu and her family had been called for the event. Rie touched her special hair ornament—the one Saburo had given her—and smiled.

The maids had removed the shoji in the main room and set out many lacquer tables in rows, as for a wedding reception or end of year celebration.

Hiro brought in a man carrying several large pieces of equipment. “This is Mr. Akita, Grandmother. He is going to take a picture of you, your likeness. This is a new invention that has come into the country recently. Your picture will then remain for all future generations of the family to see and enjoy.”

“My picture? What an idea. I don’t really want people to see what I look like now, Hiro-chan.” She tried to adjust her hair, to arrange herself in a more presentable way. She sat absolutely straight as Mr. Akita set up his equipment with the tripod and black cover.

“You look beautiful, Grandmother. And I want us to toast you on your birthday.” He raised a cup and all the family followed suit, with cries of “Happy Birthday, Grandmother.”

The Scent
of
Sake

363

Rie looked around at her assembled family and bowed, trying her best to conceal her tears. All the family was present, though Kin, Kinnosuke, and Buntaro were also part of what she had worked all her life to achieve. White Tiger was now the largest sake empire in all the land.

Rie’s days and months passed quietly, often in her room or in the nursery with O-Natsu, sometimes in the parlor in front of the Butsudan, occasionally making her way slowly down the hall to the office to speak with Hirokichi and Buntaro.

One day Rie hobbled out into the courtyard and paused at the huge barrels where she had spent so many vigorous hours. She glanced toward the dark door of the kura and inhaled her favorite scent, the yeasty aroma of brewing sake. Then her gaze rested on the old well, and for a moment she could almost imagine Toichi there. She had done what she had set out to do and taken a small step toward redemption in the process. But now, looking back, she knew that redemption wasn’t enough. What her father had given her was so much more than what she could have ever given him in return. He had given her a rich sense of tradition, and now she was passing that tradition on to Hirokichi.

With that, Rie walked deliberately into the main house and into the front room where she carefully placed a zabuton directly before the altar, then sat so that she faced it. The morning light was glancing in through the open shutters. She reached for an incense stick, lit it, and placed the small vase in front of her fa-ther’s name tablet. Smoke swirled up around her head and curled toward her mother’s name tablet. The image of her mother’s face came to her, the delicate outlines of Hana’s chin and patrician Kyoto nose. She sat motionless for several minutes, and heard her mother’s voice call ever so faintly, “Rie.”

Rie jumped, startled. She strained to listen but could not hear the voice call again. She looked again at the Butsudan. There they all were, the name tablets of the generations of Omuras: her

364
oyce Lebra

father, Kinzaemon IX; Jihei, Kinzaemon X; Yoshitaro, Kinzaemon XI; Tama, still alive, who intervened in the chain but whose name as a woman would not figure in the formal succession, though she had been intermediary as number XII. And finally there would someday be Hirokichi, who had married a Fujiwara bride from the nobility and succeeded as Kinzaemon XIII.

Rie’s eyes filled as she was overcome with memories of so many generations, so many deaths. She glanced out the open shutters into the courtyard where the sunlight was filtering past the old well. A pang of grief shook her. Her eyes moved on toward the barrels. There beside a barrel heaved on its side was a bent, white-haired figure in a worn, indigo-dyed kimono. Who was it? She leaned closer to the open shutter and peered out. It was O-Natsu, surely it was O-Natsu. Wasn’t she holding someone by the hand? Rie caught her breath. Yes, it was Hirokichi’s two-year-old daughter, Hana, Rie’s mother’s namesake.